Chapter 3
Yet it must be confessed that the boy’s remark frequently recurred that day to Miss Durant; and if it had no other result, it caused her to devote an amount of thought to Dr. Armstrong quite out of proportion to the length of the acquaintance.
Whatever the inward effect, Miss Durant could discover no outward evidence that Swot’s bombshell had moved Dr. Armstrong a particle more than her less pointed attempts to bring to him a realisation that he was behaving in a manner displeasing to her. When she entered the ward the next morning, the doctor was again there, and this time at the waif’s bedside, making avoidance of him out of the question. So with a “this-is-my-busy-day” manner, she gave him the briefest of greetings, and then turned to the boy.
“I’ve brought you some more goodies, Swot, and I found the story,” she announced triumphantly.
“Say, youse a winner, dat’s wot youse is; oin’t she, doc? Wot’s de noime?”
Constance held up to him the red and yellow covered tale. “_The Cracksman’s Spoil, or Young Sleuth’s Double Artifice”_ she read out proudly.
“Ah, g’way! Dat oin’t no good. Say, dey didn’t do a t’ing to youse, did dey?”
“What do you mean?”
“Dey sold youse fresh, dat’s wot dey did. De Young Sleut books oin’t no good. Dey’s nuttin’ but a fake extry.”
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Constance, crestfallenly. “It took me the whole afternoon to find it, but I did think it was what you wanted.”
“I was sceptical of your being able to get even an approach to newsboy literature, Miss Durant,” said Dr. Armstrong, “and so squandered the large sum of a dime myself. I think this is the genuine article, isn’t it?” he asked, as he handed to the boy a pamphlet labelled _Old Sleuth on the Trail_.
“Dat’s de real t’ing,” jubilantly acceded Swot. “Say, oin’t de women doisies for havin’ bases stole off ’em? Didn’t Ise give youse de warm tip to let de doc git it?”
“You should thank him for saving you from my stupid blunder,” answered the girl, artfully avoiding all possibility of personal obligation. “Would you like me to read it to you now?”
“Wouldn’t Ise, just!”
Still ignoring Dr. Armstrong, Constance took the seat at the bedside, and opening the book, launched into the wildest sea of blood-letting and crime. Yet thrillingly as it began, she was not oblivious to the fact that for some minutes the doctor stood watching her, and she was quite conscious of when he finally moved away, noiselessly as he went. Once he was gone, she was more at her ease; yet clearly her conscience troubled her a little, for in her carriage she again gave expression to some thought by remarking aloud, “It was rude, of course, but if he will behave so, it really isn’t my fault.”
The gory tale, in true serial style, was “continued” the next and succeeding mornings, to the enthralment of the listener and the amusement of the reader, the latter finding in her occupation as well a convenient reason for avoiding or putting a limit to the doctor’s undisguised endeavours to share, if not, indeed, to monopolise, her attention. Even serials, however, have an end, and on the morning of the sixth reading the impossibly shrewd detective successfully put out of existence, or safely incarcerated each one of the numerous scoundrels who had hitherto triumphed over the law, and Constance closed the book.
“Hully gee!” sighed Swot, contentedly. “Say, dat Old Sleut, he’s up to de limit, oin’t he? It don’t matter wot dey does, he works it so’s de hull push comes his way, don’t he?”
“He certainly was very far-seeing,” Constance conceded; “but what a pity it is that he—that he wasn’t in some finer calling.”
“Finer wot?”
“How much nobler it would have been if, instead of taking life, he had been saving it—like Dr. Armstrong, for instance,” she added, to bring her idea within the comprehension of the boy.
“Ah, dat’s de talk for religious mugs an’ goils,” contemptuously exclaimed the waif, “but it guv’s me de sore ear. It don’t go wid me, not one little bit.”
“Aren’t you grateful to Dr. Armstrong for all he’s done for you?”
“Bet youse life,” assented Swot; “but Ise oin’t goin’ to be no doctor, nah! Ise goin’ to git on de force, dat’s de racket Ise outer. Say, will youse read me anudder of dem stories?”
“Gladly, if I can find the right kind this time.”
The boy raised his head to look about the ward. “Hey, doc,” called his cracked treble.
“Hush, don’t!” protested the girl.
“W’y not?”
Before she could frame a reason, the doctor was at the bedside. “What is it?” he asked.
“Say, wese got tru wid dis story, an’ Miss Constance says she’ll read me anudder, but dey’ll set de goime up on her, sure, she bein’ a goil; so will youse buy de real t’ing?”
“That I will.”
“Dat’s hunky.” Then he appealed to Constance. “Say, will youse pay for it?” he requested.
“And why should she?” inquired Dr. Armstrong.
“’Cause she’s got de dough, an Ise heard de nurse loidies talkin’ ’bout youse, an’ dey said dat youse wuz poor.”
It was the doctor’s turn to colour, and flush he did.
“Swot and I will both be very grateful, Dr. Armstrong, if you will get us another of the Old Sleuth books,” spoke up Miss Durant, hastily.
“Won’t youse guv ’im de price?” reiterated the urchin.
“Then we’ll expect it to-morrow morning,” went on the girl; and for the first time in days she held out her hand to Dr. Armstrong, “And thank you in advance for your kindness. Good-morning.”
“Rats!” she heard, as she walked away. “I didn’t tink she’d do de grand sneak like dat, doc, jus’ ’cause I tried to touch her for de cash.”
Constance slowed one step, then resumed her former pace. “He surely— Of course he’ll understand why I hurried away,” she murmured.
Blind as he might be, Dr. Armstrong was not blind to the geniality of Miss Durant’s greeting the next morning, or the warmth of her thanks for the cheap-looking dime novel. She chatted pleasantly with him some moments before beginning on the new tale; and even when she at last opened the book, there was a subtle difference in the way she did it that made it include instead of exclude him from a share in the reading. And this was equally true of the succeeding days.
The new doings of Old Sleuth did not achieve the success that the previous ones had. The invalid suddenly developed both restlessness and inattention, with such a tendency to frequent interruptions as to make reading well-nigh impossible.
“Really, Swot,” Constance was driven to threaten one morning, when he had broken in on the narrative for the seventh time with questions which proved that he was giving no heed to the book, “unless you lie quieter, and don’t interrupt so often, I shall not go on reading.”
“Dat goes,” acceded the little fellow; yet before she had so much as finished a page he asked, “Say, did youse ever play craps?”
“No,” she answered, with a touch of severity.
“It’s a jim dandy goime, Ise tells youse. Like me to learn youse?”
“No,” replied the girl, as she closed the book.
“Goils never oin’t no good,” remarked Swot, discontentedly.
Really irritated, Miss Durant rose and adjusted her boa. “Swot,” she said, “you are the most ungrateful boy I ever knew, and I’m not merely not going to read any more to-day, but I have a good mind not to come to-morrow, just to punish you.”
“Ah, chase youseself!” was the response. “Youse can’t pass dat gold brick on me, well, I guess!”
“What are you talking about?” indignantly asked Constance.
“Tink Ise oin’t onter youse curves? Tink Ise don’t hear wot de nurse loidies says? Gee! Ise know w’y youse so fond of comin’ here.”
“Why do I come here?” asked Constance, in a voice full of warning.
The tone was wasted on the boy.
“’Cause youse dead gone on de doc.”
“I am sorry you don’t know better than to talk like that, Swot,” said the girl, quietly, “because I wanted to be good to you, and now you have put an end to my being able to be. You will have to get some one else to read to you after this. Good-bye.” She passed her hand kindly over his forehead, and turned to find that Dr. Armstrong was standing close behind her, and must have overheard more or less of what had been said. Without a word, and looking straight before her, Constance walked away.
Once out of the hospital, her conscience was not altogether easy; and though she kept away the next day, she sent her footman with the usual gift of fruits and other edibles; and this she did again on the morning following.
“Of course he didn’t mean to be so atrociously impertinent,” she sighed, in truth missing what had come to be such an amusing and novel way of using up some of each twenty-four hours. “But I can’t, in self-respect, go to him any more.”
These explanations were confided to her double in the mirror, as she eyed the effect of a new gown, donned for a dinner; and while she still studied the eminently satisfactory total, she was interrupted by a knock at the door, and her maid brought her a card the footman handed in.
Constance took it, looked astonished, then frowned slightly, and finally glanced again in the mirror. Without a word, she took her gloves and fan from the maid, and descended to the drawing-room.
“Good-evening, Dr. Armstrong,” she said, coolly.
“I have come here—I have intruded on you, Miss Durant,” awkwardly and hurriedly began the doctor, “because nothing else would satisfy Swot McGarrigle. I trust you will understand that I—He—he is to undergo an operation, and—well, I told him it was impossible, but he still begged me so to ask you, that I hadn’t the heart to refuse him.”
“An operation!” cried Constance.
“Don’t be alarmed. It’s really nothing serious. He—Perhaps you may have noticed how restless and miserable he has been lately. It is due, we have decided, to one of the nerves of the leg having been lacerated, and so I am going to remove it, to end the suffering, which is now pretty keen.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” exclaimed the girl, regretfully. “I didn’t dream of it, and so was hard on him, and said I wouldn’t come any more.”
“He has missed your visits very much, Miss Durant, and we found it very hard to comfort him each morning, when only your servant came.”
“Has he really? I thought they were nothing to him.”
“If you knew that class better, you would appreciate that they are really grateful and warm-hearted, but they fear to show their feelings, and, besides, could not express them, even if they had the words, which they don’t. But if you could hear the little chap sing your praises to the nurses and to me, you would not think him heartless. ‘My loidy’ is his favourite description of you.”
“He wants to see me?” questioned the girl, eagerly.
“Yes. Like most of the poorer class, Miss Durant,” explained the doctor, “he has a great dread of the knife. To make him less frantic, I promised that I would come to you with his wish; and though I would not for a moment have you present at the actual operation, if you could yield so far as to come to him for a few minutes, and assure him that we are going to do it for his own good, I think it will make him more submissive.”
“When do you want me?” asked Miss Durant.
“It is—I am to operate as soon as I can get back to the hospital, Miss Durant. It has been regrettably postponed as it is.”
The girl stood hesitating for a moment. “But what am I to do about my dinner?”
Dr. Armstrong’s eyes travelled over her from head to foot, taking in the charming gown of satin and lace, the strings of pearls about her exquisite throat and wrists, and all the other details which made up such a beautiful picture. “I forgot,” he said, quietly, “that society duties now take precedence over all others.” Then, with an instant change of manner, he went on: “You do yourself an injustice, I think, Miss Durant, in even questioning what you are going to do. You know you are coming to the boy.”
For the briefest instant the girl returned his intent look, trying to fathom what enabled him to speak with such absolute surety; then she said, “Let us lose no time,” as she turned back into the hall and hurried out of the front door, not even attending to the doctor’s protest about her going without a wrap; and she only said to him at the carriage door, “You will drive with me, of course, Dr. Armstrong?” Then to the footman, “Tell Murdock, the hospital, Maxwell, but you are to go at once to Mrs. Purdy, and say I shall be prevented from coming to her to-night by a call that was not to be disregarded,”
“It was madness of you, Miss Durant, to come out without a cloak, and I insist on your wearing this,” said the doctor, the moment the carriage had started, as he removed his own overcoat.
“Oh, I forgot—but I mustn’t take it from you, Dr. Armstrong.”
“Have no thought of me. I am twice as warmly clad as you, and am better protected than usual.”
Despite her protest he placed it about Constance’s shoulders and buttoned it up. “You know,” he said, “the society girl with her bare throat and arms is at once the marvel and the despair of us doctors, for every dinner or ball ought to have its death-list from pneumonia; but it never—”
“Will it be a very painful operation?” asked the girl.
“Not at all; and the anaesthetic prevents consciousness. If Swot were a little older, I should not have had to trouble you. It is a curious fact that boys, as a rule, face operations more bravely than any other class of patient we have.”
“I wonder why that is?” queried Constance.
“It is due to the same ambition which makes cigarette-smokers of them—a desire to be thought manly.”
Once the carriage reached the hospital, Constance followed the doctor up the stairs and through the corridor. “Let me relieve you of the coat, Miss Durant,” he advised, and took it from her and passed it over to one of the orderlies. Then, opening a door, he made way for her to enter.
Constance passed into a medium-sized room, which a first glance showed her to be completely lined with marble; but there her investigations ceased, for her eyes rested on the glass table upon which lay the little fellow, while beside him stood a young doctor and a nurse. At the sound of her footsteps the boy turned his head till he caught sight of her, when, after an instant’s stare, he surprised the girl by hiding his eyes and beginning to cry.
“Ise knowed all along youse wuz goin’ to kill me,” he sobbed.
“Why, Swot,” cried Constance, going to his side. “Nobody is going to kill you.”
The hands were removed from the eyes, and still full of tears, they blinkingly stared a moment at the girl.
“Hully gee! Is dat youse?” he ejaculated. “Ise tought youse wuz de angel come for me.”
“You may go many years in society, Miss Durant, without winning another compliment so genuine,” remarked Dr. Armstrong, smiling. “Nor is it surprising that he was misled,” he added.
Constance smiled in return as she answered, “And it only proves how the value of a compliment is not in its truthfulness, but in its being truth to the one who speaks it.”
“Say, youse won’t let dem do nuttin’ bad to me, will youse?” implored the boy.
“They are only going to help you, Swot,” the girl assured him, as she took his hand.
“Den w’y do dey want to put me to sleep for?”
“To spare you suffering,”
“Dis oin’t no knock-out drops, or dat sorter goime? Honest?”
“No. I won’t let them do you any harm.”
“Will youse watch dem all de time dey’s doin’ tings to me?”
“Yes. And if you’ll be quiet and take it nicely, I’ll bring you a present to-morrow.”
“Dat’s grand! Wot’ll youse guv me? Say, don’t do dat,” he protested, as the nurse applied the sponge and cone to his face.
“Lie still, Swot,” said Constance, soothingly, “and tell me what you would best like me to give you. Shall it be a box of building-blocks—or some soldiers—or a fire-engine—or—”
“Nah. Ise don’t want nuttin’ but one ting—an’ dat’s—wot wuz Ise tinkin’—Ise forgits wot it wuz—lemme see—Wot’s de matter? Wheer is youse all?—” The little frame relaxed and lay quiet.
“That is all you can do for us, Miss Durant,” said Dr. Armstrong.
“May I not stay, as I promised him I would?” begged Constance.
“Can you bear the sight of blood?”
“I don’t know—but see—I’ll turn my back.” Suiting the action to the word, the girl faced so that, still holding Swot’s hand, she was looking away from the injured leg.
A succession of low-spoken orders to his assistants was the doctor’s way of telling her that he left her to do as she chose, She stood quietly for a few minutes, but presently her desire to know the progress of the operation, and her anxiety over the outcome, proved too strong for her, and she turned her head to take a furtive glance. She did not look away again, but with a strange mixture of fascination and squeamishness, she watched as the bleeding was stanched with sponges, each artery tied, and each muscle drawn aside, until finally the nerve was reached and removed; and she could not but feel both wonder and admiration as she noted how Dr. Armstrong’s hands, at other times seemingly so much in his way, now did their work so skilfully and rapidly. Not till the operation was over, and the resulting wound was being sprayed with antiseptics, did the girl realize how cold and faint she felt, or how she was trembling. Dropping the hand of the boy, she caught at the operating-table, and then the room turned black.
“It’s really nothing,” she asserted. “I only felt dizzy for an instant. Why! Where am I?”
“You fainted away, Miss Durant, and we brought you here,” explained the nurse, once again applying the salts. The woman rose and went to the door. “She is conscious now, Dr. Armstrong.”
As the doctor entered Constance tried to rise, but a motion of his hand checked her. “Sit still a little yet, Miss Durant,” he ordered peremptorily. From a cupboard he produced a plate of crackers and a glass of milk, and brought them to her.
“I really don’t want anything,” declared the girl.
“You are to eat something at once,” insisted Dr. Armstrong, in a very domineering manner.
He held the glass to her lips, and Constance, after a look at his face, took a swallow of the milk, and then a piece of cracker he broke off.
“How silly of me to behave so,” she said, as she munched.
“The folly was mine in letting you stay in the room when you had had no dinner. That was enough to knock up any one,” answered the doctor. “Here.” Once again the glass was held to her lips, and once again, after a look at his face, Constance drank, and then accepted a second bit of cracker from his fingers.
“Do you keep these especially for faint-minded women?” she asked, trying to make a joke of the incident.
“This is my particular sanctum, Miss Durant; and as I have a reprehensible habit of night-work, I keep them as a kind of sleeping potion.”
Constance glanced about the room with more interest, and as she noticed the simplicity and the bareness, Swot’s remark concerning the doctor’s poverty came back to her. Only many books and innumerable glass bottles, a microscope, and other still more mysterious instruments, seemed to save it from the tenement-house, if not, indeed, the prison, aspect.
“Are you wondering how it is possible for any one to live in such a way?” asked the doctor, as his eyes followed hers about the room.
“If you will have my thought,” answered Constance, “it was that I am in the cave of the modern hermit, who, instead of seeking solitude, because of the sins of mankind, seeks it that he may do them good.”
“We have each had a compliment to-night,” replied Dr. Armstrong, his face lighting up.
The look in his eyes brought something into the girl’s thoughts, and with a slight effort she rose. “I think I am well enough now to relieve you of my intrusion,” she said.
“You will not be allowed to leave the hermit’s cell till you have finished the cracker and the milk,” affirmed the man. “I only regret that I can’t keep up the character by offering you locusts and wild honey.”
“At least don’t think it necessary to stay here with me,” said Miss Durant, as she dutifully began to eat and drink again. “If—oh—the operation—How is Swot?”
“Back in the ward, though not yet conscious.”
“And the operation?”
“Absolutely successful.”
“Despite my interruption?”
“Another marvel to us M.D.’s is the way so sensitive a thing as a woman will hold herself in hand by sheer nerve force when it is necessary. You did not faint till the operation was completed.”
“Now may I go?” asked the girl, with a touch of archness, as she held up the glass and the plate, both empty.
“Yes, if you will let me share your carriage. Having led you into this predicament, the least I feel I can do is to see you safely out of it.”
“Now the hermit is metamorphosing himself into a knight,” laughed Constance, merrily, “with a distressed damsel on his hands. I really need not put you to the trouble, but I shall be glad if you will take me home.”
Once again the doctor put his overcoat about her, and they descended the stairs and entered the brougham.
“Tell me the purpose of all those instruments I saw in your room,” she asked as they started.
“They are principally for the investigation of bacteria. Not being ambitious to spend my life doctoring whooping-cough and indigestion, I am striving to make a scientist of myself.”
“Then that is why you prefer hospital work?”
“No. I happen to have been born with my own living to make in the world, and when I had worked my way through the medical school, I only too gladly became ‘Interne’ here, not because it is what I wish to do, but because I need the salary.”
“Yet it seems such a noble work.”
“Don’t think I depreciate it, but what I am doing is only remedial What I hope to do is to prevent.”
“How is it possible?”
“For four years my every free hour has been given to studying what is now called tuberculosis, and my dream is to demonstrate that it is in fact the parent disease—a breaking down—disintegration—of the bodily substance—the tissue, or cell—and to give to the world a specific.”
“How splendid!” exclaimed Constance. “And you believe you can?”
“Every day makes me more sure that both demonstration and specific are possible —but it is unlikely that I shall be the one to do it.”
“I do not see why?”
“Because there are many others studying the disease who are free from the necessity of supporting themselves, and so can give far more time and money to the investigation than is possible for me. Even the scientist must be rich in these days, Miss Durant, if he is to win the great prizes.”
“Won’t you tell me something about yourself?” requested Constance, impulsively.
“There really is nothing worth while yet. I was left an orphan young, in the care of an uncle who was able to do no better for me than to get me a place in a drug-store. By doing the night-work it was possible to take the course at the medical college; and as I made a good record, this position was offered to me.”
“It—you could make it interesting if you tried.”
“I’m afraid I am not a realist, Miss Durant. I dream of a future that shall be famous by the misery and death I save the world from, but my past is absolutely eventless.”
As he ended, the carriage drew up at the house, and the doctor helped her out.
“You will take Dr. Armstrong back to the hospital, Murdock,” she ordered.